El Onate Theatre

Palace and Lincoln Avenues,
Santa Fe, NM 87501

Unfavorite No one has favorited this theater yet

Showing all 4 comments

williame303
williame303 on November 7, 2007 at 9:47 pm

I believe that the first time I visited Santa Fe, ca. 1975, this building was the J.C. Penney’s. There was a Woolworth’s down the street and a Sears a block away. Santa Fe has changed!

lostmemory
lostmemory on December 7, 2006 at 1:53 pm

This website has a 1921 photo of the El Onate Theater. Its a little slow loading at times.

kencmcintyre
kencmcintyre on December 7, 2006 at 1:14 pm

I have an ad for the El Rio Theater in Santa Fe, circa 1952. Any recollection of this by NM locals? More info would be helpful.

lostmemory
lostmemory on September 4, 2005 at 1:17 pm

I found this theater mentioned on a New Mexico website. It reads as follows:

“In Santa Fe, the Spanish Pueblo Revival frenzy partly symbolized by the Palace of Fine Arts (1917), La Fonda Hotel, and the Federal Building (now the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum), neatly coincided with the rise of the film industry. Thus, Santa Fe built the first "Pueblo” movie theatre, El Oñate, in the early 1920s. Located across the street from the Palace of Fine Arts on the northwest corner of the Plaza, El Oñate’s facade mimicked the twin church bell towers first introduced to Santa Fe’s Plaza by the Palace of Fine Arts a few years earlier. El Oñate, along with the Paris Theatre, popularized silent movie festivals in the capital during the 1920s, but its star was soon eclipsed by the brilliance of the Lensic Theatre in 1931".